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At First….Garak Market
I didn’t know anything. I knew nothing about Korea. Perhaps that was best. Here I was on a plane from Canada to Seoul. It was my first time on a plane and I didn’t know anyone in Korea or anyone on the plane. I was completely alone and didn’t mind. I was used to doing…
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Beomosa Temple in October 1999…
While lost outside of Pusan… While we were lost in what Koreans call ‘the countryside’ north of Busan, we had to walk back towards the city once we realised we would never see the fortress we wanted to go to. In the area, after we saw the goats, I left Robert on the road and…
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Bongeunsa Temple, Anguk-Dong
BonGeunSa…. Soon after arriving in Seoul, I looked at a tourist map and found there was a Buddhist temple in Kangnam called Bongeunsa and I really wanted to go see it. I headed out alone one day and took Line 8 to Jamsil and switched to the Green Line and went around 5 stops on…
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Busan in 1999…
Our Trip to Pusan in Oct 1999…. The city of Pusan was the second largest city in South Korea at the time of our vacation, with a population of around 3.6 million people. Pusan is found on the Southeastern coast of South Korea at its furthest Southeastern point. It is a huge port city as…
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Canned Bugs? Horrible Things I Saw…
Canned Silkworm Larvae… Foreigners like me saw cans like the one above when we were in grocery stores. They were on shelves and nobody could understand why. I asked one of the secretaries at my institute about it and she acted like she was very embarrassed and wouldn’t tell me anything. People must have eaten…
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Changdeok Palace, Seoul in 1999
As far as getting Robert’s luggage back when we were in Karak-dong during his visit in January, 1998, we had to get Anthony to get it back after we waited a week. He called Korean Air and was on the lounge desk phone for a long time speaking Korean. We were going to give up…
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Chogmyo Shrine, Anam Industries, My Secretaries
Other Sights…. Back then, Seoul had 5 palaces and an enormous shrine in its central downtown. I visited a gorgeous palace that I’d say was my favourite called Changgyeongkung twice by myself. It was large and full of trees and the same types of buildings as Kyeongbokkung, but you felt more relaxed on the grounds.…
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Chogyesa Temple, Odusan Observatory
Chogyesa Temple… Five blocks southeast of the North Gate was a temple called Chogyesa. It was considered to be the main Buddhist temple in all of Korea. And the richest one. Even though it was the richest one, it wasn’t as pretty as bright-coloured Bongeunsa and frankly, it wasn’t as nice-looking as the other temples…
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Dead Fish Hanging Above Doorways…
Age… I’ll never forget how every one of my Korean students(mostly male adults) asked me, “How old are you?” before they said anything else. I wish they had known that in my society, no one was supposed to ask a woman that, so it was strange. I was always taken aback every time. After a…
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Eggs Not in Fridges and Jujube Trees…
There was no social media back then. On the subway, many young Korean people were looking at cellphones but we didn’t have cellphones in Canada at all. Every Sunday night, I went across the road to the apartment complex next door and called my mother and then my husband from a payphone to tell them…
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Gyeongju in 1999…Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Grotto
Kyeongju….. Kyeongju is a special city full of cultural relics that is a must-see for tourists in Korea. I planned for us to take an inter-city bus to get there from Seoul and to spend 2 nights. Thank goodness I could find a lot of information in that Lonely Planet guide, as internet wasn’t available…
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Hiking GuRyongSan Mountain
GuRyongSan Mountain in Winter of 1997 My student, “Anthony”, used to bring me to see places and to experience Korean culture. He could practice his English, yes, but he could help a foreigner to feel welcome also, which is what many Koreans felt they should do, I was told. While I was teaching in Seoul,…
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Korean Coffee and Tea in the Late ’90s…
Instant coffee… The coffee situation in Korea was not very advanced in the 1990’s. Koreans seemed to like coffee but I never saw or heard of there being any percolators in apartments and never noticed any ground coffee in stores. I only ever saw instant coffee there in most of my travels back then. There…
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Mini Minivans…
Squid… In Canada, there are no squid. In Korea they have them in abundance. A fellow teacher told me that earlier in 1997, before I got there ìn September, she’d often see a Korean person walking down the street carrying a dried squid, chewing on it. She said dried squid were everywhere and everybody was…
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Namdaemun Market, Seolnal in 1998:
Namdaemun Market…. Soon after my arrival in Seoul in 1997, the Korean people told me about a huge indoor/outdoor market that I had to see. They described how many vendors came from rural areas and brought their produce there to sell to tourists and city-dwellers, and they described how these farmers started in the night,…
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Restaurant Leftovers Were Sent to Pig Farms…
The Han River Bridge… I remember several male Korean office workers telling me about an important historical tragedy from the Korean War. I hadn’t been in Korea long when they told me. They said there was only one bridge crossing the Han River in 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War. When the North…
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Seodaemun Prison and Namhansanseong…
Seodaemun Prison and Namhansanseong Seodaemun….. Seodaemun is the area just to the west of Kyeongbokkung Palace. It was important for me to go because the West Gate of Seoul was here and that long, beautiful mountain with all the granite on it, InWangSan, was here as well. The day we decided to go to the…
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Teaching in Karibong, Aju Middle School
‘LG’ class…. One of the main classes I had was in Karibong-dong, teaching four businessmen at a building that was run by LG. LG is one of the biggest companies in Korea. My “LG class” was in a large building complex that had a cellphone plant and many offices and a cafeteria in Southwestern Seoul.…
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War Memorial Museum and the Seoul Zoo…
War Memorial Museum and the Seoul Zoo… The War Memorial Museum…. I thought it was important for us to see the War Memorial Museum in Yongsan, Seoul, where the American forces were based. It did not disappoint. When we had come outside after being in the museum for 3 hours, I remember saying to myself7…
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What Am I Eating?, The Sejong Institute
Korean Food… Can you tell what these dishes are? I am not totally sure myself! Many Korean dishes are low-fat and they eat a lot of vegetables too. I found it hard not having potatoes and Canadian bread. In the grocery stores, potatoes were expensive and their bread was heavy and yellowish-orange. I figured they…
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What I Saw in Seoul
Gyeongbokgung Palace… Gyeongbokgung Palace is a very large, beautiful complex. The king’s throne, 2 ponds and a pagoda-style museum are inside. When you face the front of it, you can see extraordinary mountains behind it. North Korea is around 50 kms beyond those mountains, a Korean businessman once told me. I told him that my…
My Memories of Seoul 